A Short Proof of Kuratowski's Graph Planarity Criterion

Yury Makarychev
DEPARTMENT OF DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY FACULTY OF MECHANICS AND MATHEMATICS MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY MOSCOW 119899, RUSSIA E-mail: mail@makarych.mccme.rssi.ru

ABSTRACT We present a new short combinatorial proof of the sufficiency part of the well-known Kuratowski's graph planarity criterion. The main steps are to prove that for a minor minimal non-planar graph G and any edge xy : (1) G-x-y does not contain -subgraph; (2) G-x-y is homeomorphic to the circle; (3) G is either K5 or K{3,3} .
c 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In 1930, K. Kuratowski published his well-known graph planarity criterion [1]: a graph is planar if and only if it does not contain a subgraph, homeomorphic to either K5 or K{3,3} . Since then, many new and shorter proofs of this criterion appeared [2]. In this paper we present a short combinatorial proof of the ifpart. It is based on contracting edge, similar to that of [2, section 5], but we avoid the reduction to 3-connected graphs. By -subgraph we mean a subgraph homeomorphic to K{3,2} . Consider a minor minimal non-planar graph G. Lemma 1. If xy E (G), then G-x-y does not contain a -subgraph.

Proof. Suppose not. Consider an embedding of G/xy in the plane. Let G = G-x-y = (G/xy )-(xy ). Let F be the subgraph of G bounding the face of G containing the deleted vertex xy of G/xy . Then F cannot contain a -subgraph [2, section 1]. But since G does, there is an edge e in E (G ) E (F ). Since for each forest T R2 , R2 T is connected, F contains a cycle
Journal of Graph Theory Vol. 25, 129 131 (1997) c 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0364-9024/97/020129-03

130 JOURNAL OF GRAPH THEORY

FIGURE 1.

C about which we can assume that its exterior contains e and that its interior contains the deleted vertex xy . It is clear that no pair of vertices on C is connected by a path in G -E (C ) E (ext C ). This means that in an embedding of G-ext C , which exists by the minimality of G, C may be assumed to be the outer boundary. This embedding can then be combined with the restriction of that of G/xy to G , which contradicts the non-planarity of G. Lemma 2. If xy E (G), then G-x-y does not have two vertices of degree one.

Proof. If u, v are such vertices, then by minimality of G, they are both of degree more than 2 in G and hence adjacent to x and y . By Lemma 1, there is no edge disjoint from x, y, u, v in G since these vertices contain a -subgraph. But each vertex in G-x-y -u-v is of degree more than two and hence joined to at least three among u, v, x, y . Since u and v are of degree three in G, in G there are at most two vertices besides the x, y, u, v and hence G is one of the graphs in Figure 1. The cases are determined by whether, in G-x-y, u and v are adjacent, have a common neighbor or have distinct neighbors. All of them are planar. Lemma 3. If xy E (G), then G-x-y is a cycle.

Proof. Let G = G-x-y . Then every block of G is either a cycle or just an edge (by Lemma 1). If G is not a cycle, it has at least two end blocks (as it cannot be an edge). By Lemma 2, one of them is a cycle; denote it by C . There is a unique cut vertex v of G contained in C . All vertices of C -v are adjacent to x or y (since their degree is more than two). Since there are not less than two such vertices, we have a -subgraph. Hence no edge is disjoint from it by Lemma 1. Also there are no isolated vertices in G (since they are most of degree two in G, which contradicts the minimality of G). Therefore all other blocks of G are just edges at v . By Lemma 2, there is just one. Since G- (the endpoints of this edge) does not contain a -subgraph, G is the 3-prism, which is planar.

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Proof of the Criterion. Let x1 , x2 be two adjacent vertices of a minor minimal non-planar graph G. If a point u G = G x1 x2 is connected to xi but not connected to x(3i) , then the point v , next to u along G , is not connected to xi (for otherwise, G-(vxi ) is planar by the minimality of G and we can add vxi to a planar embedding of G-vxi to get a planar embedding of G. Therefore either every point of G is connected to both x1 and x2 or the points of G , connected to x1 and x2 alternate along G . In the first case G contains a subdivision of K5 , in the second, it contains a subdivision of K{3,3} . ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge B. Mohar for useful discussions, A. Skopenkov for his concern and referees for their helpful suggestions on improving the exposition of this paper. References
[1] [2] K. Kuratowski, Sur le probl` eme des courbes gauches en topologie, Fund Math. 15 (1930), 271283. C. Thomassen, Kuratowski's theorem. J. Graph Theory 5 (1981), 225241.

Received April 18, 1995